If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Newbie, want to learn how to make a photo gallery

I am fairly new to web design, and want to learn how to make a photo gallery. I have seen ones where you click upon the thumbnail picture in a group of pictures, then that particular one comes up to large size in front center, then you see a 'next' or 'previous', and if you hit next you are taken to the next photo at large size. An X at the bottom, takes you back to only the thumbnail pix. The real estate people use this script, or whatever it is, to show details of houses. When the big picture is present on the page, the background darkens somewhat.
Im interested in learning to do this with my own photography.
I found something called jQuery, but have no idea of how to use it on my site, so you know that Im pretty new at this.
However I have used 2Dynamic Drive scripts before, and was able to follow their Excellent! instructions of how to use them in my html page.
But this jQuery one I found on the web, didnt have the great instructions that I have found here.

Hope Im not asking too much, but I would LOVE to be able to make a gallery or slide show like this.
And I know if anybody can make it work for a pretty much newbie like me, then you people here will.
I have a screenshot if that would help, I can post it later if needed.
Thank you in advance.

Yes, dynamicdrive is where I got the ones I have used already in the past.
I did Google for the gallery scripts too, but the particular one close to what I am looking for was on jQuery site and the instructions were way way beyond me.
Thats why there will be someone here at dynamicdrive who will probably know what Im looking for.
And the instructions on dynamicdrive are much much better than others.
Here is a screenshot of what I would love to learn. Its not a great shot but hopefully someone here will be able to guide me to it or something close.
Thank you

Goodness, I got this for a reply, something doesnt look correct, moderator please take a look at this, as its what I just got.
Here is the message that has just been posted:
***************
[Mod's Note] - I've removed this, to stop the seo boost from the links.

For your image gallery, are you looking for something that will pull images from a specific folder and 'build' the gallery for you (also including the enlargement overlay automatically) or are you happy to create the grid of thumbnail images in HTML yourself and then just implement the enlargement overlay with a jQuery plugin manually?

I guess it comes done to how much work you're willing to put in and how often the page needs to be updated. If the pages (or at least the gallery/image parts) are generally static, an HTML + jQuery plugin would probably be fine, but if the image galleries require frequent updates, you might be better off using php to pull all the images from a folder and generate the gallery html on the fly.

Which scenario do you think works best for your situation?

Aside from the gallery thumb grid setup, what's the jQuery script you've found? Can you give us a link?
I personally like Fancybox and think it does what you need : http://fancyapps.com/fancybox/
The standalone demo page might be easier for you to get your head around though : http://fancyapps.com/fancybox/demo/
Have a look at the source code and see if you can fit it into your project.

Let us know how you get on - you'll probably need to provide a link to your page so we can help you further though.

1. thank you keebs, for removing that spam. And explaining this so well.

2. Thank you Bud, for the info.
I will look into Galleria, but I was really hoping that dynamic drive will have something that I could deal with at my level. I am a newbie, and I need the expertise of DD to help me at this point in time.

3. Thank you Beverly! To answer your question, I just want to pull images from a folder, my html page.
Im not sure how to do this. I can put the images in with html OK, but figuring out the way to put the whole thing together is what I cannot do.

I will have to look at your questions tomorrow, and go carefully thru them.
Oh, I see your second post, this is almost exactly what I would want, though I dont see the option to go to next picture, or previous.

This was the one which made me feel like an idiot, I couldnt even get the zip file for it,http://jquery.com/download/
And when I finally got the code, what to do with it. They dont help you like DD does.
And I have my own pages with much earlier code from DD, which I hope its OK to put here, as I dont want to have my sites flapping around on the net, as they are just for my family and my PS classmates. Let me know if its OK to post my site stuff here and I will put it here tomorrow. I was a bit taken back with the post that I requested to be removed earlier, can spammers view this site?
Thank you! You have provided me some confidence.